The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (14 page)

The creation of the
comitia centuriata,
even weighted as it was in the aristocrat's favor, may actually have been intended by the kings to help preserve their own power. For, despite the fact that the kings were Etruscan, Rome remained a “Roman” city. There were tensions between the noble Roman families and Etruscan royalty. The new assembly gave the king a forum to appeal directly to the infantry. This population was growing, and it was not only becoming increasingly important in military affairs, but it came from the lower orders—many of whom were from outside the city.

Judging from later tensions between plebeians and patricians, many in the lower orders felt oppressed by the nobility. By basing the class divisions on property, the assembly also began to give this growing propertied class a foothold in the political process independent of their birth. These considerations may help to explain why Rome's pending revolution was a revolution of, by, and for the aristocrats. If so, it also helps explain why, after the overthrow of the kings, patricians and plebeians spent nearly as much of their time fighting each other as they did foreign enemies.

Sometime in the late sixth century
B
.
C
.
E
., traditionally 509
B
.
C
.
E
., the aristocrats drove out the Etruscan kings and formed a new government and constitution that put them in complete control. They abolished the office of the king but kept some of the royal religious offices such as the
potifex maximus
and vestals (revolution against the king is one thing, but revolution against the gods is quite another). The senate was retained, and to replace the king, they created two annually elected officers, called consuls.

Originally, the consuls had to be of patrician birth although plebeians were eventually allowed (in theory, though not much in practice) to become consuls. The consuls had the king's power of supreme authority in war and in law (including the power of execution). This power, called
imperium,
was gradually extended to other Roman magistrates in other capacities, but the consuls retained the executive authority over the Roman State until the end of the Republic.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
The name of the Romans' chief priest, the
pontifex maximus,
was later adopted by the Latin church for the Bishop of Rome, that is, the Pope. If you look at inscriptions or documents, you'll still find the Pope referred to in this way, often by the abbreviation
pont. max.

 
When in Rome
When looking at things Roman, you might spot the fasces—bundles of wooden rods bound around a double axe with a red ribbon. Fasces were symbols of command authority, or
imperium,
which included punishment (rods) and execution (the axe). Mussolini, who hoped to establish a new Roman Empire, chose this symbol to express his political philosophy. He called his party fascist (but he apparently forgot the bit about being subject to the law).

The people were divided into two classes, patricians (nobles) and plebeians (commoners). Patricians could hold offices, become senators, priests, consuls and the like. Plebeians could, well, serve in the army (which they did a lot), go into debt (which they did while serving in the unpaid army), and work off the debt as indentured labor for the patricians between battles. If they couldn't pay their debts, they lost their land and their freedom.

Archeological evidence indicates that Rome went into a steep economic decline in the period immediately following the expulsion of the Etruscan kings. Tradition also indicates that there were continual battles: The Etruscans tried to retake Rome, cities and towns that had been subservient rebelled or attacked, and internal factions within the noble class fought for power.

In addition, the next 200 years saw a long struggle by the commoners to obtain legal and political rights in spite of the aristocrats. This sometimes brutal and bloody struggle is called the Conflict of the Orders. Although the Romans eventually resolved this conflict, the manner in which they resolved it lay at the roots of the Roman Republic's eventual disintegration into civil war.

Things were especially bad for the plebs who were under the aristocrats' control in the battlefield, under their jurisdiction at home, and dependent upon them as keepers of legal and religious traditions. But as Rome's fortunes began to stabilize again, by around 450
B
.
C
.
E
., the social unrest generated by these pressures began to bring changes to Roman society and culture.

One artifact of these changes was the Romans' longest surviving legal documents, the Twelve Tables. Sometime around 450
B
.
C
.
E
., a board of 10 men was entrusted with drawing up the basic legal traditions and publishing them on wood (later bronze) tablets in the forum. Before the Twelve Tables, laws were a matter of legal and religious tradition, and these traditions were promulgated by the aristocrats. The laws, even as published, still favored the rich and powerful, but the mere fact that they were written down indicates the popular pressure that was exerted to have them recorded and codified.

 
Roamin' the Romans
Here are three laws from the Twelve Tables:

• IV. 2: If a father gives up his son for sale three times, the son shall be free.
  
• VIII. 1: If anyone has sung or composed a song against another person that was causing slander or insult . . . he shall be clubbed to death.
  
• (Unknown number): There are eight kinds of punishment: fine, fetters, flogging, retaliation in kind, civil disgrace, banishment, slavery, and death.
  

Many of these laws became obsolete, but portions of them remained in effect until the Emperor Justinian's reform of the Roman legal codes in
C
.
E
. 530, 1,100 years later.

The plebeians were beginning to make inroads into the Roman upper classes at the time of the Twelve Tables. A few years before, for example, it had been made legal for plebeians to marry patricians. But don't imagine that this was some kind of warm-hearted acknowledgement for “wrong side of the tracks” marriages; it reflected the fact that some plebeian families had enough power and prestige to be acceptable to the noble class.

Roman tradition has it that the plebeians also succeeded in forcing the nobles to give them more power by seceding—that is, by withdrawing into their own portion of the city and refusing to fight in the army. By so doing, they left the aristocrats and their loyalists to fend for themselves. Such a maneuver, when done on the eve of a pending attack, could be p-r-e-t-t-y effective. (“Go ahead and die for
your
city, don't let
us
stop you!”) The aristocrats pleaded for patriotism, tried force, but eventually had to deal.

The plebs created their own political institutions to safeguard their interests. They formed an assembly, the
comitia tribunis
(tribal assembly), and elected representatives, called tribunes (
tribuni plebis
). The plebeian assembly, besides electing the tribunes, discussed and decided collective action on behalf of the plebs. It also elected its own financial officers (called
aediles
) and established its own record keeping system and office. It was, for many years, a virtual, but not officially recognized, part of the political and cultural landscape.

A tribune's job was to protect the people and to stop any abuses against them by the magistrates or others. He accomplished this through his power of
intercessio
(literally, “getting in the way”), and by means of a
veto
(“I forbid” in Latin). While tribunes interceded for specific individuals, they exercised their veto over other assemblies (including the senate) and magistrates. If they thought something was against the interests of the common people, the tribunes could intercede, and the matter—regardless of the number of votes or who was doing it—could not proceed.

Tribunes had no legal place in legal and political traditions, and so the senate didn't recognize their powers at first. The plebs, however, gave tribunes the condition of being “inviolate,” which basically means, “touch him and we all touch you.” This status gave the tribunes the backing they needed to intervene where they saw fit.

Gradually, however, the plebs and their institutions became recognized as parts of the Roman social and political system. By 287
B
.
C
.
E
., plebeians were not only allowed to hold any office, but one of the two consuls was required to be plebeian. The plebeian assembly was also granted the official recognition that it needed to pass legislation at this time.

Government of the Roman Republic.

You might notice some problems with this arrangement. It seems, doesn't it, that there are really
two
separate legislative bodies (plebeian and senatorial) that don't have to come to agreement before a piece of legislation becomes law. Imagine the United States House and Senate each being able to pass legislation without coming to conference! Well, you're
right.
And doesn't it seem problematic to give a relatively minor official the ability to veto everything in the state without provision of an override? Well, you're right there, too. Still, the system worked remarkably well.

One reason this system worked for so long was that the upper crust of the plebeian families actually had more in common with their patrician rivals than with the other “common” people. As long as this was true, plebeian and patrician sides of the aisle were basically two facets of the same political and economic elite, and they exercised power in the service of their common interests (which, I must add, were not always different from those of the people). To students of political science, this may seem shockingly contemporary. Such are the lessons of history.

Nevertheless, despite these internal struggles, Rome continued to conquer Italy, Carthage and north Africa, Greece, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Palestine, most of Western Europe, and parts of Britain. These conquests brought new peoples, problems, ideas, and opportunities into the Romans' complex and sometimes contradictory way of handling their expanding empire.

• Roman traditions about the past are roughly accurate but mostly entertaining.
  
• Both traditional and archeological evidence show that several cultures were influential in Rome's beginnings.
  
• The Etruscan kings made Rome into a powerful city through public works projects and military and political organization.
  
• The period after the kings was marked by social, political, and economic struggle between the Roman orders.
  
• The plebeians created their own assembly and officials to protect their interests. There was an uneasy balance of power between these institutions and those of the senate.
  

After the overthrow of the kings, Rome entered a period of history in which it was governed by elected magistrates, assemblies, and the Senate. This period is known as the “Republic” (from the Latin
Res Publica
) and ends in the establishment of the Principate under the first emperor, Augustus.

Although the Republic had a shaky start, it soon entered a period of incredible expansion and development. In a struggle for dominance, the Romans began to exert control over their immediate neighbors, then their neighbors, and then their neighbors, until not just Italy but the whole Mediterranean became a part of Rome's neighborhood. Rome went from a mid-sized Latin city to the center of an enormous empire. Roman civil engineering paved the way for this development, and Latin literature rocketed from primitive beginnings to the rhetorical highs of Cicero and the sublime poetry of Virgil and Horace. How did that happen? Well, read on!